Our Approach
Rapid, Sustainable Productivity Improvement
Lauras International’s Rapid Lean approach stands out in its ability to deliver very rapid savings early on whilst implementing all the longer term tools and techniques necessary to achieve long term sustained improvement. Our Bottom Up, Top Down approach to implementing improvements involves:
- Building the need for change and improvement skills on the shop floor (Bottom Up) and
- Working with management to ensure the systems and behaviours to support the shop floor change exist (Top Down)
Lauras also trains improvement champions for each site who can repeat the training, and use Sustainability Models for each pillar to ensure all elements that affect the rate of improvement are constantly improved.
How to get Rapid Results
Understand, Plan, Implement, Sustain
Rapid Lean is how we actually implement rapid improvement in the right way. This starts with the right improvement plan, based on the right kind of understanding – if you want to know more about that return to Opportunity Assessment and Improvement Planning.
The implementation step of Rapid Lean is very extensive, and is unique to each site. However, naturally there tend to be common elements, including:
- Executive coaching
- Baseline measurement
- Impact workshops (the engine behind rapid results)
- Meeting coaching
How to get Sustainability
Gold Standard People Engagement
Lean excels at understanding that the shopfloor must own the improvement for it to be maintained (and further improved) – and so employees at all levels need to be properly engaged for any improvement programme to be successful. Training is an important part of achieving people engagement, but it is often undercooked. Firstly the training must explain the “Why”, not just the “What”. Taking time to explain why, and helping people along the path of discovery is critical. Once the training is delivered, it’s then really important to make sure that people get to use new tools and techniques, and aren’t just told about them and then forget. It’s why we recommend the ‘See, Try, Do’ training method to engage the shopfloor teams we work with.
However, that’s not all it takes. That approach flows through everything in a Rapid Lean implementation, but the following steps are normally necessary:
- Strategy Deployment
- Measurement Systems Improvement
- Improvement Champion Training
- Ad-hoc support for advanced tools
Guaranteed Results
Impressive Savings
The results that Lauras International achieve are significant: we measure results in terms of the dollars, pounds, and euros returned in real benefit – as measured by our clients.
Following an assessment, our programme includes a Performance Guarantee – we deliver to an agreed outcome, or you chose how much we deserve. Typically, we guarantee at least 3-5 times our fee in annualised savings, just from the project alone.
Our performance guarantee is there because we know that our approach to improvement really works, and can be made to work every time. On top of rapid results, we deliver more besides – the greatest benefit is the change in thinking we leave behind at all levels, and the maturity towards improvement that site teams develop.
We are a results focussed business, and have developed implementation overview processes to ensure success every time.